Category: Food

Bay Area Secret Menus

We visited the Presidio Social Club last night and it turns out the restaurant has a secret menu. I did a little research when we got home and found this interesting secret menu PDF of other restaurants in the Bay Area that also have tricks up their sleeves. I especially want to try the Swan Oyster Depot’s sashimi plate.

Here’s one for national chains. Do any of you know of similarly comprehensive lists for other big cities?

Easter Cakes Baked in Egg Shells

1cakesbakedineggs

For Easter, I decided I wanted to make these awesome cakes baked in egg shells.

jaimeeggshellcakes

I find them pretty magical, and fairly easy to make, if a little tedious. Then again, we did make a lot of them.

henningeggshellcakes

I tweaked the recipe a bit because I couldn’t find any egg nog, and I also wanted lemon cakes. The differences between my cakes and the cakes in the recipe are as follows:

-Doubled the recipe.
-Added low-fat buttermilk instead of egg nog. (Whole fat would have worked better, but the store didn’t have it.)
-Added juice of one Meyer Lemon.
-Added lemon zest of two Meyer Lemons for flavor.
-Forgot to oil the insides of the shells.

2eggshellcakes

If you don’t feel like making cake from scratch, a cake mix would probably work just fine. In conclusion, cake in egg shells kicks ass. Happy Easter!

3eggshellcakescollander

Mighty Menu

More menu madness! How do I maintain my edge in the face of meal-planning tips? I type naked. (Except for my socks. My feet are always cold.)

Anyway, in my continuing quest to lose baby weight, I’ve been reading You on a Diet by Dr. Oz. It isn’t so much a diet book as a “Potato Chips are Not a Breakfast Food” book.

The book suggested adopting one meal choice that becomes a habit. You could have steel-cut oatmeal every morning for breakfast, a turkey sandwich on whole-wheat bread every day for lunch, or a bowl of nine-grain gruel for dinner. This dramatically reduces the wild-card meals where you might accidentally eat an entire wheel of triple-cream brie.

I decided to adopt habit meals that have endless variations, so I’m having smoothies for breakfast and salads for lunch. For dinner, I’m freezing a bunch of soups that we’ll have whenever we’re too tired to cook or order pizza.

BREAKFAST SMOOTHIES

*Update: I added serving info and measurements to more adequately reflect the amount of fruit you’re getting per serving. If you’re making a smoothie for just you, you’ll want to halve the ingredients.

Makes two servings:
1 cup Orange juice
1 cup Lowfat plain yogurt
1 Banana
2 tsp. Cinnamon (a natural appetite suppressant)
3 tbsp. Psyllium husk (for fiber)
Flax seed oil (for delicious Omega 3 acids)

1 cup of frozen fruit, whatever you prefer:
raspberries
blueberries
mangoes
strawberries

Maybes:
fresh ginger
whatever fruit is about to spoil in the fridge (sometimes I’ll throw it in the freezer right before it spoils for extra longevity and smoothie slushiness)

LUNCH SALADS

Mixed greens or spinach
Tomatoes or cherry tomatoes
Carrots
raw sunflower seeds
hard boiled eggs
cooked beets

Maybes:
oranges or tangerines
mangoes
cooked chicken
smoked salmon

DINNER SOUPS

From Chic Simple Cooking
Chicken soup with lemon zest, thyme, and potatoes
Curried vegetable soup with fresh gingeroot
Winter borscht

From Bill’s Sydney Food
Spring vegetable soup

From Bill’s Open Kitchen
Spiced zucchini soup

SNACKS

Crudite
-snap peas
-celery leftover from soups
-cherry tomatoes
-baby carrots

Raw almonds
Raw walnuts
almond butter on whole grain frozen waffles
dried apricots
fresh fruit
ak mak whole wheat crackers

I Heart Menu Planning

I love to cook, but don’t have a ton of time. When I can, I like to spend a whole Sunday putting up a bunch of frozen dinners. I try to plan our grocery buying so that nothing’s wasted by making mostly frozen stuff, and then having fresh stuff on hand for nights when we have more time to prepare a meal.

Anyway, last weekend the girls were talking about how they hate meal planning, and I mentioned how much I love it. We decided I should share my menus. Most recipes are from Bill Granger cookbooks because those are the cookbooks I’m working though right now.

I’ve linked out to recipes where I can find them, but I don’t have the energy to type in the recipes I couldn’t find online. Buy the cookbooks! They’re excellent and have quality, shiny photos.

FRESH FOOD
This is stuff we’ll keep in the fridge for snacking and super quick meals.

Crudite
-celery
-broccoli
-sliced jicama or turnips
-baby carrots
-hummus
Mixed salad to have as sides with dinner
6 hard boiled eggs
Fruit salad with honey and rum
Smoothies (frozen fruit, condensed OJ, plain yogurt, psyllium husks)
Turkey sandwich ingredients

FROZEN FOOD
These are the meals I spend one whole day making so we have stuff to eat when we’re too exhausted to cook.

chicken with summer vegetables (red pepper, zucchini, yellow squash, basil and chicken stock)
Bill’s Spring Vegetable Soup
spiced zucchini soup
coconut bread
Bill’s corn ginger soup
Bill’s lentil soup with parm toasts

FRESH DINNERS
These are the foods I’ll make the week after I’ve put up frozen dinners. They’re things that don’t freeze well and have fresh ingredients.

thai fried rice
crab spaghetti
carrot avocado salad (via Chocolate and Zucchini)

WILL KEEP
These are the meals I’ll make about a week later because they don’t have many ingredients that will spoil quickly.

open-faced omelette
udon noodles (this is a cleanup recipe involving udon noodles, chicken stock, some fish sauce, and whatever veggies you have left over from the crudite or other recipes)

TIPS
-When I get home, I put the eggs on to boil, then prep crudite and fruit salad.
-I prepare the meals that I need to freeze, starting with those that will take longest to cook.
-I make a list of any fresh food that we should eat first, and post it on the fridge.
-I prep fresh meals whenever you have time in the week to come, and move on to “Will Keep” meals, using any leftover veggies from crudite or other meals to make Udon noodles.
-I have a Manhattan.

Bourbon Cherries

For those of you who also have surplus maraschino cherries on your hands, Stace Dayment had a good tip for me:

“Dump out liquid and save for drinks/Shirley Temples. Fill back up with bourbon. Put in fridge until the next big party. Make frou-frou desserts with those cherries on top or, just serve the cherries alone.”

Pie

Last year, I pulled a list out of San Francisco Magazine, “125 Very Best Things to Eat in the Bay Area.” I recently came across it again and decided it was about time we started working our way through. In that spirit, we grabbed a couple of friends and headed an hour and a half south to Pescadero for Olallieberry pie at Duarte’s Tavern. Pie, we learned, is a superior theme for Saturday night. We also learned that if you’re looking for some post-meal protein to accentuate your pie and ice cream dinner, don’t go with the oysters.

Handy

If you live near an ocean, this is especially useful. It’s the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s wallet-sized Seafood Watch Card. It rates seafood consumption by how safe it is for the environment and the particular species.

Obscure Persephone Joke Here

I’m a girl who digs a good system. Therefore, I was disproportionately excited to come across this method of opening pomegranates without staining yourself and your kitchen.

And as long as you’re opening pomegranates, make this guacamole immediately. It has pears, grapes, and pomegranates in it. I know it sounds odd, but it’s so good it’ll make your tastebuds ache.